


you shouldn’t eat things you find on the ground

by Phantom_Midge



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Community: fail_fandomanon, Gen, Horror, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-18 04:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14204712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom_Midge/pseuds/Phantom_Midge
Summary: Buffy finds herself in an unsettling place.





	you shouldn’t eat things you find on the ground

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/307246.html?thread=1750041134#cmt1750041134).

There’s damp grass pressed against her face and a tree trunk taking up most of her vision. She’s not entirely sure how she got here, but at least she’s not dead. That’s always a plus. Buffy slowly, carefully pulls herself up from the ground and leans against the aforementioned tree.

She surveys her surroundings.

It appears to be a park, and quite a nice one at that. At least, it _would_ be nice, if it weren’t so eerily quiet. Even in the dead of night with no people around, you might expect to hear crickets or owls or something, but there’s no sound whatsoever. Not even the wind. The sky is pitch black, the area illuminated only by the lampposts that line the gravel paths winding through the park. Painted dark grey, the poles blend in with the darkness, so that from far away it appears as though the lights are floating in midair.

There’s an austere looking building not too far away that might be a school, or might be a jail. It’s hard to tell. The adjacent playground suggests the former, but the barbed wire fence encircling the building suggests the latter. 

Buffy rises from the ground and starts to make her way toward the playground.

It has all the things you would expect a playground to have; slides, swings, monkey bars, those little springy horse thingamajigs; it’s practically the platonic ideal of a playground. The swings are as empty as everything else, and there is no strong breeze to move the swings, yet they rhythmically swing back and forth nonetheless.

“That’s suspiciously horror movie-like,” she thinks. There doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger, though; her Spidey senses aren’t tingling at all. She steps off the grass and onto the sand. 

There is a small, dark mass between the swings and the monkey bars. She goes over to inspect it, and finds that she cannot. No matter how hard she focuses on it, it remains a blurry, indistinct thing. Realizing that this is probably not a wise decision, but unable to resist curiosity’s pull, she bends down to pick it up. It feels warm and slippery in her hand. She still cannot tell what it is.

She trudges toward the swings, still holding the mysterious object. She reaches out with her free hand and grabs onto one of the swing seats as it flies toward her, seemingly propelled by nothing.

Sitting on the swing, she looks down at the object once again. It is not as blurry as it was before; she can make out a vague shape, and a colour – a dark, dull red. She squints at it, and suddenly realizes exactly what it is. She should be disturbed, but she is not.

The heart pulses slowly in her hand. She brings it closer to her face, studying it, trailing a finger along a vein. (Or is it called a vessel? She doesn’t remember.) Her mouth starts to water, and before she can stop herself she’s raising it to her mouth and sinking her teeth into it.

***

The door of the Sunnydale High library is locked. Inside, there are five people: four conscious and one not. The latter is lying on her back, hands folded over her chest, encircled by a ring of blood and black candles. She appears to be sleeping.

The others have been keeping vigil over her.

“I don’t think it’s working,” says Xander, breaking the silence. He is slumped in his chair, still weak from blood loss. “Shouldn’t she be back from wherever they sent her by now?” 

“It’s only been a few hours. We need to give it more time,” says Giles. His knuckles are white. He finally puts down the knife he has been gripping much too hard for much too long.

“Maybe- maybe there aren’t enough candles?” says Willow. “The book is kinda unclear about how many we need, maybe if we add another candle… or maybe…” She pauses, her gaze briefly flickering toward Xander, then back to Buffy’s not-sleeping body. “Maybe we were wrong about which blood type it calls for,” she mumbles.

Xander glares at her. “Well, I sure fuckin’ hope not, ‘cause-”

He is cut off by a scream of agony coming from behind him. He leaps up from his chair in shock, and Willow and Giles immediately swivel around to see Faith, collapsed to the floor, clutching her chest like she’s having a heart attack.

It’s over as quickly as it begins, and Faith lets out a shaky gasp, her arms falling to her sides. Her face is white as a ghost, but she doesn’t seem to be harmed.

“Are you okay?” Willow asks cautiously.

Faith winces. “Yeah, fine. Dunno what that was.”


End file.
